Ted Rall for December 13, 2009

:o/

Maybe Ted Rall is having a groundhog day type thing.

we’re hokey & we’re pokey - would that we could “turn ourselves about”, bring the soldiers home, circle the wagons, and focus on our own crises. keeping the ears peeled for Incoming from the Payback mission-accomplished “Nation-Built” populations.

I assume the drone missile is on its way to Pakistan since the Obama administration is putting a lot of leverage against the Pakis if they fail to clean up their own backyard, so to speak. The Prez. is no more a thug than Bush was.

Yeah . I thought I already seen this one .

I know the comments about poppies were when this ran the day before, but it makes more sense to comment on the current page – doesn’t it? But anyway …

There is absolutely no reason we couldn’t grow our own poppies here in the U.S. There is all sorts of nonsense about how the soil and climate have to be just right, they will only grow in certain very special places, blah blah and blah. This is just drug-war propaganda to discourage people. We could grow all the opium poppies we need and probably supply the world market as well! An alternative crop for our farmers, and no more funding for the Taliban. This is just one more thing we have offshored to other countries that we could be doing here with our own workers and farmers.

Yes! Cannabis too I mean, not instead of. We have virtually every kind of climate in the U.S. Poppies in the Southwest, cannabis in the Midwest. Actually, both of those can grow in a wide range of climates and people can grow and utilize them in their own backyards almost everywhere. Maybe the places that are hot AND extremely humid are not so good for P. somniferum, but still … And we have a lot of plant-breeding skill in this country so that we can work on selecting and breeding new varieties that would be adapted to different climates and growing seasons, etc. Let’s put Americans back to work on this!

You’d have to compete with Tasmania 50%, Turkey, 23% and France 21% & Spain 4%. Producers of opium alkaloids for the pharmaceutical market.

^Think it’ll work? We don’t make anything here anymore. And plus its cheaper to make it else were instead.

Tariffs on the wicked weed anyone?

Cannabis grows in approximately the same climate conditions as tobacco. It was widely rumored in North Carolina (where I grew up) that if tobacco products got banned or marijuana got legalized, that RJR was ready to roll out crops instantly, and suddenly NC would be a very different place politically…

California Proposition 215 (1996) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposition_215

I had a cannabis plant growing in my garden in South Africa (we call it dagga there). Our garden services kept taking an extraordinary interest in it so we took a closer look after a few weeks. We named it Oliver. My brother was rather keen on it. His own little plant! (I even puke when I get a whiff of it so I couldn’t partake :( ) However, we were later forewarned that it was rumoured we had one so we reluctantly smoked it all away at a braai (bbq) party. It was well attended.

Cripes, our country was founded on hemp! Ask Betsy Ross what her flag was woven from…

I remember the amazement expressed three decades ago by Chinese in Beijing who simply couldn’t understand why students from the US were so wild about the fact that Cannabis sativa grew wild in places like the Summer Palace Gardens (the Yihe yuan (颐和园), which like the old Summer Palace, the Yuanming yuan (圆明园), was trashed by the British and the French during the Second Opium War) and could be picked for the taking. «Only old peasants smoke that stuff», they would say, shaking their heads….

Henri